Here's an interesting article that was in my local paper today dealing with nightmares and dreams and what they might mean. The one that was funny to me was the "exam" dream. They say 40% of people have a dream like this that brings them back to high school.

Nightmares scream for attention
What are they trying to tell you about your life?
TERRI JO RYAN Cox News Service

Your heart is pounding, almost out of your chest, as you try to outrun the menacing figure in pursuit.

"Who is he? What does he want? Why won't he stop? Where can I hide?"

You think you might lose him ducking down a dark alley, but then you find yourself suddenly falling. You look down at the ground rushing toward you, painfully aware you'll die on impact.

Instead of a thud and oblivion, however, you wake up sweating and panting, your hands clawing at the mattress as your racing thoughts finally start to settle.
"It's only a nightmare," you think. But you still don't find it easy to get back to sleep.

Castleman, author of "Threads, Knots, Tapestries: How a Tribal Connection is Revealed Through Dreams and Synchronicities," says nightmares are the "report card" of the psyche -- a gift from the subconscious to help prod the dreamer to action in his or her waking life.

"We get information about ourselves (in nightmares) that is not conscious and that we usually completely deny," says Castleman. "The nightmare is motivated only to help, heal, instruct and confront -- like all good teachers."

For example, in our angst-driven society, one of the most common nightmares is the "failing the exam" scenario.

Even if the dreamer has not darkened a classroom door in 20 years, he finds himself late to school, lost for a long time until arriving in a study hall with the horrifying realization that it's the day of the final exam and he hasn't studied all semester.

"About 40 percent of Americans report the "exam" dream -- a very specific image about our culture," said Castleman. It's no surprise: The freshman year of college offers the most pressure and the most freedom -- "with more stress than we know what to do with."

The exam nightmare can represent the dreamer's lack of confidence in his own abilities, his inner turmoil at being unprepared for something in waking life.
"Our psyche is telling us something is wrong," Castleman said. "It doesn't mean you are crazy. The dream is trying to bring the disturbance up to the surface where you can deal with it."

Fright Night

NIGHTMARE: Stuck in slow motion or paralyzed in place, unable to move or make a sound.
MEANINGS: Dreamer is feeling stuck in a rut, getting nowhere or unable to voice true feelings.

NIGHTMARE: Major personal injury, even dismemberment.
MEANINGS: An aspect of your life, usually not related to the physical self, is being neglected or mistreated.

NIGHTMARE: Trapped, locked in.
MEANINGS: Feeling confined. The dreamer needs to be open to a new perspective and explore new courses of action in his waking life.

NIGHTMARE: Car careens out of control.
MEANINGS: Dreamer finds her life too hectic and needs to slow down, act more peacefully and "enjoy the ride."

NIGHTMARE: Catastrophic disaster -- earthquake, avalanche, flood, fire or storm.
MEANINGS: Disasters represent emotional upheaval -- an earthquake, our world is being shaken up; an avalanche, feeling overwhelmed and buried by some situation we find ourself in; a flood, being caught up in the currents of everyday life and not feeling on solid ground; a fire, being consumed by passion, rage or some other strong feeling that may feel out of control.

Here are various nightmares and what meaning they might have in our waking lives:

Someone is trying to break into the home.
Meanings: The intruder is often an inner psychological figure who may represent some shameful or unwanted part of yourself who is breaking into your consciousness. Some new insight is about to emerge from the darkness.

Being caught naked in public.
Meanings: Usually set in the workplace or school, this mishap is said to mean you're trying hide something, or that you're not well-prepared for something, and people will know it. This type of dream is usually pointing out, by the fact that the other characters in the dream don't seem to notice, that we are the only one viewing ourself this way, and usually mistakenly so.

Falling from a great height.
Meanings: Feeling heavy, unsupported, worried about something? Image represents the need to feel freer, unburdened. Perhaps dreamer is also seeking to be "more grounded."

Losing teeth.
Meanings: If your tooth is loose, or all of your teeth have fallen out, you may be having issues with your appearance. You might be embarrassed about something, which could be preventing you from successfully communicating with someone.

Hmmm but what if all my dreams are about killing other people that I know... what does that make me...

I'm not sure if you're serious or not....... in case you are here's something that relates to that.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Dreams Department

Question

What does it mean when I kill someone in my dreams? In my dream I was climbing up a ladder behind by brother (I don't even have a brother in waking life!) to get to the top bunk bed and I put a knife in his back. Even in the dream I was shocked by my behavior. I'm a very non-violent person and was upset that this occurred, even in a dream!

Answer

Finding ourselves behaving in dreams like criminals is very upsetting, even though it is quite common. For any upsetting experience, its often useful to write the experience down in a journal as clearly and detailed as possible. Although your dream will have personal meanings beyond what anyone but you yourself can discover, the act of killing and being killed in dreams is really quite normal, even among those who would never hurt a fly.

Dream workers find the most useful way to approach these dreams is to first see that the deaths and slayings are not meant to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. This becomes especially clear when we kill figures that don't even exist in waking life. The image of death taken symbolically can mean many things, one of which can be the death of an old attitude or personality trait or behavior pattern.

In this way the whole sense of the dream is reversed, and death becomes a doorway to a new way of living. As you can see, the meanings shift according to who is being killed. Killing our parents may be giving up values they gave us that no longer work for us, while killing a sibling may be getting beyond relationships that involve useless rivalry and competition.

It is always interesting to note how *far away* the murdered figures are from you, both physically or in terms of blood relations. An unknown person or distant cousin may indicate that the personality trait or habit that is dying or being done away with is rather distant from your core personality. Killing oneself or an intimate other offers the opportunity to make key changes in your life or attitudes.

If this were my dream, the unknown brother might represent a part of myself that I'm very competitive with but don't admit it. We both want the "Top Bunk" or top place. By dreaming about this I become conscious of this struggle and may choose some alternatives, such as sharing the top position with those key parts of myself where I would usually kill rather than let them be on top. I would want to know who the unknown brother was, and perhaps watch and see who I compete with as I go through a regular day.

The key here is to approach the elements in the dream metaphorically, and then to apply these metaphors to ourselves and our life. In this way the most adverse dream conditions become our allies in personal growth & self empowerment.

__________________

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